Reflections, commentaries, critiques and ideas from 40 years experience in the fields of Community Development, Community Education and Social Justice. Useful tools and techniques that I have learnt also added occassionally.

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The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

It's An Anthropogenic World

We’ve heard of anthropogenic contributions to climate change, even those who deny
it.
Anthropogenic – meaning; caused or produced by humans. Most of us will
have come across the term in reference to climate change. Climate scientists
refer to the major contributor to climate change being anthropogenic. Climate
change is certainly a threat and a worrying concern. Yet if we cast our view
wider we discover that its not the only anthropogenic concern. Here are just a
few more:

War/Terrorism
Clearly the act of aggression between one state and another, or that of one
sector of society on another, is human induced. It can scarcely be thought of
any other way. Human beings have been at war with one another for centuries.
Humans have decided to resort to violence to settle disputes. War and terrorism
are anthropogenic occurrences.

Refugee Crises
Most refugees are fleeing the ravages of war. Whether it was the mass exodus
during World War II or the current flow of refugees from Syria and other
war-torn countries in the Middle East or Africa, conflict is the major reason
someone becomes a refugee. Refugees become refugees because of the actions of
human beings. The refugee crisis is an anthropogenic one.

Species Extinction/Biodiversity Loss
Jorgen Randers (Norwegian Business School) has calculated that the current
species extinction rate is 1,000 times that of the natural rate. His
calculations show that we are losing 100 species of flora and fauna every day,
mainly because of our human desire for timber, soya, palm oil, and
beef.1 Illegal wildlife trafficking is further contributing to this
rapid decline. Again, this is all from human causes – anthropogenic.

Economic Inequality
The latest Oxfam report of global inequality shows that just eight men own as
much wealth as the poorest half of the planets population – 3.6 billion
people.2 The French economist, Thomas Picketty, points out in his
widely acclaimed book, that this inequality (both between nations and within
nations) has been rising rapidly since the early 1980s.3 This rise
in inequality is not because of some externality – it is because of human
activity. Whether it be squeezing the wages of working people whilst increasing
the salaries of CEOs exorbitantly, large transnational corporations paying
little or no tax, or corporations using their wealth to influence regulations in
their own interest and not that of ordinary citizens; it is all by human
agency. Economic inequality has anthropogenic causes.

Waste
Roughly one-third of all the food produced annually for human consumption is
wasted.4 In OECD countries, more than 2 kg of waste is produced per
capita each and every day – 800 kg per year.5 In some countries the
average per capita waste per year is around 1.3 tonnes. What’s more – OECD
consumers are throwing away 35% more wast now than they did in 1980. Human
beings produce the stuff. Human beings throw it away. Anthropogenic waste
production!

Anthropocene and Wetiko
Earlier this century the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen coined
the term Anthropocene to mean the geological epoch in which humans
have altered the planet. He coined the term in order to help us humans
understand that we did indeed shape the earth and that we had a guardianship
here on earth. It seems we may have forgotten this. We have forgotten not
only our guardianship role with the earth, we have forgotten our goodwill to our
fellow human beings.

Another term that has entered the conversation relating to our role on earth
is wetiko. Wetiko is an Algonquin word describing the European
conquerors who arrived in North America with a mean spiritedness of greed,
excess and self-centred consumption. Within the word is a sense of lack of
empathy – both for other humans and for the earth.

When the concerns such as climate change, war/terrorism, refugee crises,
species extinction/biodiversity loss, economic inequality, and waste are seen
are understood as being anthropogenic it is easy to appreciate how the two
terms, anthropocene and wetiko, have come to be associated
with the way in which humans treat one another and the earth.

With this understanding, and the full comprehension of these two terms, then
the questions we need to be asking ourselves are not ones of: what do we do? or
how doe we solve this? The questions we must ask ourselves are questions such
as: who are we? what is our nature? These are questions related to our
psychology (individual and collective), our consciousness, and ultimately, our
very humanity.

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About Me

I have almost 40 years experience working (paid and unpaid, government and non-government) in community development/education and social justice fields. I have continued to keep myself abreast of philosophies and theories in these and related fields. This blogsite will offer ideas, thoughts, reflections on these fields as well as giving some tools and techniques. I don't pretend that these will be original but I do hope that they will be able to translate some of these diverse ideas into coherent forms accessible to workers in the areas.